What we get up to, family-life, home-ed, mess and monsters!

Category Archives: science

A great day out, after a slow start at Sandwell Valley and Dartmouth park. We picked up my sister E and finally met her new kitten Percy-mega cute! We deceided to head out to Sandwell Valley as it’s not far and there was something for everyone. We played on the equipment at Dartmouth park, Ot and Tig enjoyed demonstrating their prowess with the gym machines. Ate a little lunch then walked up to the smaller play area on the hill with a sandpit where we swung, spun and dug for a while.

After that it was time to walk the dog! We headed around the sculpture trail in Sandwell Valley then over to the Priory and Priory woods. Tig was really good at recognising Hawthorn, and Elder as well as B and Tig noticing Willow, everyone spotted oak and holly and I showed B Ash. Sherlock managed to dive into an algae covered pond so is very stinky and needs a bath!!! Everyone was tired out by the time we got back to the car but still managed to find the energy to collect some conkers and have a sneaky cheeseburger or McFlurry from Mcdonalds.

We dropped E of home

and then headed back to veg out with soem screens-we are all feeling a little tired after this week *yawn*

This morning, it was beautiful so we decided to head out to chase water, to the pretend beach, which is one of the boys’ favourite places. I took along a selection of dinosaurs and plastic animals, my pentax camera and iphone so we could have a go at the diy.org photographer badge if the mood took us.We did lot of ball throwing, paddling and sand smushing whilst creating some innovative scenes for the various animals. They had a go at landscape pictures.

These are some of the fantasy scenes the boys created and took pictures of….

We made a colaborative piece of land art

Talked to a lovely lady with her dogs, Seumus and Ruben; played with a very cute 145 week old labrador called Maggie and even had a quick climb and a play on the park!

After lunch and a brief foray into anthill on the pads we had a bit of free time, mainly screens but games not online. After that we had a go at dissections, of the virtual kind! Everyone used froguts, an app on the iPad, which was especially good for B as there was audio fr everything so he wasn’t waiting for help with reading tricky parts. Tig and Ot worked through a disection based unit on fish from emind and B had a go at an online Salmon dissection . (biologist diy.org patch)

Froguts was everyone’s favourite because it was a ‘proper’ dissection; the fish however could lead to a real life dissection as we can use the fish afterwards (cat treats if it’s very mangled). The boys then worked with me to draw a diagram of the fish, their choice of internal or external view and added labels. We did a diagram of a mushroom last week and I notices that they hadn’t got the simple line part of the idea and were struggling with label placement so this was a great opportunity to have a go. Also, internal diagrams go towards yet anotehr patch :0D.

After tea, everyone gets ready for bed and can then have their internet based time, on Minecraft, Roblox, Youdtube etc and do their own thing.